The Limbreth Gate

SEVEN

Ki's eyes had reopened of their own volition. She lay staring up into the dark and finally realized she was awake. She rolled her head to one side to stare at her companion. Hollyika slept peacefully on her side, slightly curled. The outlines of her features were shadowed by night and softened by a light overlay of downy fur. Ki examined her face with some curiosity. The dim but omnipresent light of this land divided her face into halves, one silvered and exposed, the other hidden by shadows. The exposed eye was as large as a horse's. A horizontal row of stubby lashes across the center of the eye marked the juncture of the two lids that hooded it. Her nose began, not between her eyes, but slightly lower than their inner corners. It was broader than a Human's nose, with the nostrils more clearly defined and useful. Even as she slept, they flared softly with each breath to bring her the olfactory news of the night air. Her short upper lip was split and rounded like a cat's. The mouth beneath it was extremely generous, the corners reaching nearly to her jaw hinges. Only the front portion of it was used for speaking. Ki estimated that if she opened her mouth to its widest capacity, she could easily engulf a rabbit's head. Ki gave an uneasy squirm as she recalled rumors that this was precisely how the Brurjans dispatched their meat.

Little hands were curled peacefully beneath the impressive jaw. For all Hollyika's height, her hands were no larger than Ki's. Her fingers were thicker, lightly furred on their backs with thick black nails that curved slightly over the tips. The plumpness of her fingers and their tininess in relation to the rest of her made her hands look soft and helpless. Ki would wager it was an illusion.

She looked again to her sleeping face, but Hollyika's eyelids had parted in the centre, to reveal a horizontal slit of eye. She focused on Ki and opened her eyelids fully. Then she sat up slowly, stretching and rolling her muscled shoulders. When she yawned wide, Ki stared in helpless fascination at the double rows of pointed teeth within that impressive maw. Hollyika surged up to her feet in one effortless movement.

'It's time to go,' she said softly. 'I can feel that it's time to move on again. Can't you?'

Ki nodded. She did feel it, an urging to rise and once more seek those distant glimmers that beckoned so temptingly. Peace was waiting for her at the end of this road; the very thought made Ki hungry for it. Rising she tossed her blanket into the back of the wagon. Hollyika dropped hers in as well, but when Ki turned to lift the team's harness, Hollyika put a restraining hand on her arm. 'How can you practice beast slavery in this place?' she asked accusingly.

Ki recoiled a little from her touch, but Hollyika remained as she was. She was not menacing or angry, Ki decided; only rebuking. 'All my life I have driven a wagon. It is what I am, a Romni teamster.'

Hollyika shook her head. 'That is as foolish as if I said that I have always been a warrior and a rider of horses. That is only true of my life on the other side of the Gate. These lands opened my eyes. Odd to think that in the darkness I finally saw. I must war no more, nor put a beast to my tasks. Nor must I partake of meat.'

'So you left your harness upon the road, and left your horse to stray where he would.'

Hollyika nodded. For the first time Ki noted how her softly furred hide hung from her arms and paunched emptily upon her body. She had never heard of a Brurjan eating anything but meat, or grain cakes moistened with blood. She did not look as if she were adapting well to her new diet. She looked pathetic, or as close to pathetic as a Brurjan could look. 'Why have you left your clothes behind as well?'

'Shall I wear leather, the hide of another creature ripped from its bleeding body? Besides, the cloaking of my body was a false modesty. I shall no longer hide what I am. On the other side of the Gate, my body was a stranger to me, for it is neither Brurjan nor Human, and clothing myself was a denial of myself as both. But with the help of the Limbreth, I have accepted myself, and so should you. Be rid of thedisguises you wear, cast them aside as you cast aside the harnesses that enslaved those poor beasts. Can't you feel the truth of what I speak?'

Ki could not meet Hollyika's eyes; she shook her head slowly, feeling vaguely ashamed that she didn't wish to comply. Like cool water rising around her, she began to feel the righteousness of Hollyika's words flood through her body and mind. She had been wrong to bind animals to her will. She must stop. And it was also time to shed all clothing and weapons, to cast aside the outer shell she had accumulated in the stained world beyond the Gate. She was coming home now, to peace and fulfillment. Would she come as a dirty, willful child? Did she want the Limbreth to find her unworthy? Ki pulled her blouse over her head and shook her hair free down her back. She stepped out of her long road skirt, kicking her boots after it. She stretched, warm and glowing in the night's caress. Hollyika beamed on her.

'I have been here longer than you, so the river has taught me more. But don't be discouraged, for I will help you. I learned that from the river already; that we must help one another if we are to reach the goal. The stretch of road ahead of us is the final test of our worthiness.'

'But ... I thought you were coming back. I did not pass you on the road.'

Hollyika shook her head. 'The road leaves the river here. It goes a long dry way, and I carried no water with me. I walked and slept and walked again. But no water did I find, only a dried-up streambed. Without the waters of this world, I couldn't go on. I had to come back to the river. We must carry our own water if we are to go on. We can't do without it, for a dryness assails one that is more than the thirst of throat and tongue. It is a very shriveling of the spirit.'

'The water casks on the wagon are full,' ventured Ki. 'If we took the wagon and team ...'

Hollyika's hand flew up in a forbidding gesture. 'The water cask we can take, rolling it on before us.'

There was something wrong with that idea, a fatal silliness, if only Ki could pinpoint it. But the logical and rational parts of her mind had abdicated. Lacking other ideas, she followed Hollyika to the wagon. Ki began to unfasten the heavy straps and buckles that held the cask in place, and Hollyika stooped at her side, ready to assist in lowering the gurgling weight. Her nostrils flared wide and pink-rimmed in the darkness. She drew back from Ki and the wagon, her hands drooping in disgust. Ki glanced over at her in puzzlement. Then her lesser nose caught it, a cold stench like the reek of night mist off a poorly drained graveyard, or the noisome damp that rises at night from black-flowing city gutters. Hollyika spoke in a strangled voice. 'It's the water cask. The water's gone stagnant, or was bad when you took it on.'

Ki opened the tap a trifle. No more than a mugful escaped before she shut it, but the putrid smell of it as it stained the river gravel made Ki gag. She backed away from the wagon, flapping a hand in front of her face.

'We will have to dump the cask, scrub it clean with river sand and refill it,' Hollyika said. Ki shook her head.

'Water that bad can't be scrubbed away. It soaks into the wood. The cask will only spoil whatever we put in it.'

'Then what will we do?' Ki heard the soft rattle as her plume rose and fell in agitation.

'We carry water in something else. In a waterskin or a jug or something.' Ki felt unreasonably pleased with herself for thinking of this. Not only would it be easier than rolling the cask along, it was ... it was ...She had lost the end of her thought. No matter. Her thoughts had a way of floating away from her lately, of beginning in strange places and ending in the middle. But even so, she knew that the thoughts she managed to hang onto were better thoughts than she had ever had before. Her ideas were changing, becoming tuned and perfected to harmonize with the better world she traveled through, and Hollyika was experiencing the same purification.

Ki scrabbled about in the darkness of the cuddy, seeking for a container for water. The waterskin she usually kept on a hook by the cuddy door was gone, and she could not remember where. Most of her food stores were of the dried variety, kept in boxes and clothes and paper wrappings. The two crocks she kept were wide-mouthed awkward things, fine for balancing in a rattling wagon but too wide to carry comfortably.

She gazed again around the cuddy interior. If only her mind would focus. She let her eyes roam, hoping for inspiration. She glanced over the sleeping skins wrenched from living creatures, at the dried smoked carcasses she had once fed upon, at the sheathed rapier for the shedding of blood, at Vandien's soft leather shirt ...

Vandien. There was something about Vandien, something she had to remember. She fumbled and found it. She was so fond of him. He had taught her to follow her heart, and she would ever cherish his memory because of that. Something else?

Ki sprang forward with a cry. She had bought him a second gift before she left Jojorum. She fished a jug of brandy from under the pillows. She had hidden it for a surprise, for it was not the usual cheap sour wine they kept to clear the road dust from their throats at the end of a day. This was potent stuff, the heady spirits of ... somewhere. Ki found her memories about the brandy fading. What had she been thinking, to put it under the pillows? Ridiculous storage place. As Ki picked up the jug, it gave a questioning gurgle. She tucked it firmly under her arm.

Hollyika loomed over her, watching impassively as Ki carefully worked the stopper free of the narrow neck. Ki gave an appreciative sniff. Hollyika's nostrils flared as she caught the scent. The flames of righteousness dimmed in her eyes as she licked her lips.

'It seems a shame to pour it out,' Ki observed to her.

Hollyika seized the jug in her stubby fingers and raised it; her brow wrinkled and her plumes clattered as she inhaled. She started to hand the jug back to Ki. But then, as if doubting her first judgment, she took a second cautious sniff, gave Ki a quick look, and took a short nip from the jug. She blinked her eyes slowly; Ki watched fascinated as her lower eyelids rose to meet the falling upper lids over her large and shining eyes.

'It does seem a shame,' Hollyika agreed with her after a deep breath. 'Yet we must have a vessel to carry the water in. This one seems to be our only choice.' She began to tip the jug, but Ki caught her hand and righted it before any sloshed out.

'Would you profane the grounds of this world by pouring onto it the product of that world beyond the Gate? Even as I did not leave your saddle and clothes upon the road on my way here, lest these traces of our evil origins offend others, so too we should not infect this pure earth with this drink.'

Ki took the jug from Hollyika's clutch to tip a little of the brandy into her own mouth. She tasted the warm sunny day in some far orchard where the stuff had been born. A tiny warmth kindled in her belly, a memory of the sun on the trees. Ki felt oddly divided. The sun-warmth of the brandy in her throat andbelly contrasted strangely with the cool but urgent desires of this night-wrapped land and its swiftly flowing waters. Ki took another mouthful, both to savor the moment of division inside her and to be scared by it. She closed her eyes, feeling the elements battle within her body, scarcely aware of Hollyika taking the jug from her hand.

When she opened her eyes a moment later, it was to see Hollyika lowering the jug from the delicately pursed lips of her impressive mouth. Ki took the jug back. She noticed how comfortable Hollyika looked, seated with her back against the yellow spokes of a wheel. Joining her, Ki tipped up the jug again, and then set it carefully in the gravel between them. Had drink ever been so stimulating in such a curious way? Ki knew she hadn't the great capacity for it that some of her Romni companions did, but she was accustomed to drinking with dignity and control. Whether the brandy was more potent than she knew, or because it battled with the river coolness inside her, Ki felt the world tilting around her, gently swinging in a manner at once delightful and alarming.

She felt Hollyika's hand on the jug and relinquished it to her. 'I did not think that Brurjans drank, other than water, milk, and blood,' she observed genially. 'But then I thought them totally carnivorous as well. Goes to show you should never believe rumors about another species until you actually get to know one.'

'True.' Hollyika spoke after a longish interval.

'What's true?' Ki had lost the string of conversation. She took up the jug that was leaning against her hip.

'True you shouldn't believe rumors. True Brurjans don't drink wine, or eat green stuff growing in the dirt. Don't lick our fur, either.'

Ki was pleased with herself for drinking and listening at the same time. She gave the brandy just a few moments to slide all the way down her throat and curl up warm and cozy in her belly. It drove the caressing chill of the river water into her extremities, making her fingers and toes tingle with icy sparks. The sensation was well worth paying attention to. But don't forget manners. One must converse with one's guest. 'Never heard that Brurjans licked their fur,' Ki replied companionably.

Hollyika set the jug down on the gravel between them with a thunk. 'They don't!' she said in a less than amiable tone. 'Stupid rumour, probably started by a Kjeetan. Kjeetans. Now there's a species with disgusting habits. You know that whenever they shed a skin, they boil it up in a soup and eat it?'

Ki wrinkled her nose in distaste, and took a mouthful from the jug to chase such unpleasant thoughts from her palate. She frowned a bit, for the jug felt substantially lighter than it had a moment ago. She turned to watch Hollyika drink. She was a large being, and a mouthful to her was a mugful to Ki. But Ki did not begrudge it. There was plenty. The warmth of the brandy filled Ki's body, a small sun warming her from within. But all over her body was a layer of coolness, the coolness of this sunless land. She shivered delightedly in the contrast.

'But!' Ki suddenly said as a radical thought took over her mind. 'But you are a Brurjan and you are drinking brandy! How about that, huh?'

Hollyika set the jug down carelessly. It tumbled onto its side, but was no longer full enough to spill. Ki set it meticulously upright anyway, pushing its base into the gravel to make it stand.

'Not a Brurjan!' Hollyika was now as mournful as she had previously been annoyed. 'Part Human, you know. Mother always said it meant I could indulge in the vices of both species. So I did. But no more!' she suddenly promised the overcast skies. 'No more! Hollyika eats meat no more. No more making apoor old horse do what I want him to do. I let him go. He can go roll on the grass or chase mares or just stand around and do nothing. I let him go. Even though I love him. Damn old horse. He's all I got, Ki, and I don't have him anymore. I let him go, you know. And I threw away my sword and my armor and my clothes and everything. I'm only going to eat green stuff and drink cold water from now on, until I find the peace of the Limbreth.'

'Me, too,' Ki murmured. Their hands met on the jug. Ki graciously let Hollyika drink first. She regretted it a moment later when she had to turn the jug completely up to collect the last swallow. She set the jug very carefully down and lay back on the gravel.

The coolness of river water danced and tingled over her entire skin, but the warmth of the sun was inside her; Ki did not shiver. Idly she raised both hands and brought the tips of her two index fingers together. On the third try she actually made them touch, but was disappointed when no cold spark of river energy leaped between them. She let her hands fall back to her side and expelled a long sigh. Hollyika was talking beside her, her voice so close to Ki's ear that Ki surmised she, too, must be lying flat on the gravel.

'... Picked its shell off a little at a time. How it whistled, and its feelers rattled against its carapace. Yellow foam dripped from its mouth parts. I was sick for days after. But it talked. Oh, yes, it talked. I believed in them then. They said it was a clear choice and I would have to make it. I could either wring the truth of its battle plans out of it, thus harming one creature, or I could let hundreds of my own ride to certain death. It seemed such an easy choice then. This one T'cherian would die slowly, with every imaginable pain, or hundreds would be slaughtered. I took it as a number problem, Ki. Which is greater, one or a hundred? But at my hands, perhaps, that one T'cherian suffered more than one hundred Brurjan warriors would suffer by wounds inflicted in open battle. I never thought of that until I came to this place. But now I think of it, and it saddens me. Yet I know that the thinking of these thoughts is a necessary if painful part of my preparation. Peace will be mine when I reach that horizon we see glimmering. It is not unlike seeing a physician; before he can help you, he must prod every hurt, even the ones that have closed over and you think healed. This is what the Limbreth is doing to me. Prodding open the festering wounds on my spirit; not to be unkind, but to let them drain of their foulness. Have you not felt it so, Ki?'

Ki felt strangely lethargic and little else. But she was willing to talk and listen. ' My sins are of a different kind, I fear. I have loved well, but without embraces or words. Tender feelings I have dissipated with a jest. I am chary of my feelings.'

'Your crimes are a child's crimes,' Hollyika declared with a snort. 'I could wish I had so little to regret.'

Her indulgent tone nettled Ki. A child's crimes, were they? Her competitive spirit stirred and she began to search for other, worse things to admit, things at least as bad as slowly picking a T'cherian to pieces. In her newly found penitential spirit, she dredged up old acts, ones scarcely regretted by her before, but suitable to air as crimes. 'Two Harpies have I slain by my own hand,' she intoned darkly. And caused the death of their clutch of eggs. One Windsinger have I slain.' She was neglecting to mention that the first deaths had been a matter of self-preservation, and the second caused more by ignorance than malice. Why spoil a shudderingly evil list of admissions with a set of extenuating circumstances?

But Hollyika was not to be outdone. 'Death! You made of execution the greatest crime? Would I still had your innocence to bear before the Limbreth!! Death I have done a hundred times and more, in the heat of the battle or the stealth of back streets. Shall I save my greatest regret for deliberately ending a life probably started in the fever of mating rut, coincidental to release? I have lived all my life as a mule, Ki ; to buy acceptance, I have performed the most base of deeds, ones that blacken my mind to recall. To prove myself a Human, I have betrayed Brurjan friends. To prove myself a Brurjan, I have feasted onthe bodies of the slain, even when I did not know the reasons for the battle. To prove my affection for a Human beloved, I once plucked the sacred teeth from the still-warm jaws of dead Brurjan comrades, the teeth they needed to enter the Hall of Feasting Eternal. And when I found that Human later in the embraces of a slender and hairless Human female, I did not let past affections sway me. I alternated my slow attentions between the two. I taught each to hear the screams of the other as music, for while he screamed, she was spared my talents, and while she wept and begged and gibbered for mercy, his flesh could know no new torment.'

'Why do you tell me this?' Ki asked in a low intense voice. She did not wish to hear these things from Hollyika. Neither the cool peacefulness of the twilight land nor the sun glow of the alcohol in her belly could completely numb her to such words. Ki wanted Hollyika to remain a chance met companion, a fellow pilgrim on the trek to the glowing horizon. She was going to peace and fulfillment, an end of her troubles. Why did Hollyika have to remind her so fully of the pains of the world she had left? All those deeds had been done on the other side of the Gate. She wanted them to be left there.

Hollyika did not speak again for a long time. Ki heard the rushing of the river, the shifting of the horses as they moved about cropping the dark grasses. From deep within Ki came a wish for sunrise, for the illumination of all dark things by a friendly light. Before Ki could follow the thought further, Hollyika spoke.

'I tell you so that I am honest; because I felt that if you did not know, you would like me. That would be a pleasant experience, but I would be deceiving you for the sake of it. In this land, I must make no deceptions lest I lose all. Had we met before, on the other side of the Gate, you would not have liked me, Ki. A month or so ago I would have ridden up on your wagon in the darkness to put a lance in your beasts, to smash your kettle on the campfire and set flame to the rest.'

'A Rouster.' Ki had long known it without admitting it to herself. Now a chill went over her, a cold as horribly unlike the delightful chill of the water as death is unlike daydreaming.

'A Rouster,' Hollyika confirmed, and the darkness went darker. ' For a fee, merchant, I will keep this town free of Romni vermin. An honest man like you need not compete with wandering tinkers and tradesmen like these. For a fee, I will terrorize their children, cripple their teams, destroy their wagons and scatter their caravans. For a fee. '

Childhood memories of terror in the dark stirred in Ki. They rustled about the back of her mind like lizards, but she refused to let them come to the front of her thoughts. Repressed long ago, the memories could only scuttle in the dark corners of her past. Hard hands had fallen on her in the dark, and she had screamed ... She felt a curious suspension of all feeling for Hollyika. She teetered on a balancing point in her mind. She could think about the Rousters and all they had meant to her in her past life, and as the lethargy of the brandy slipped away, she would hate Hollyika, perhaps to the point of a physical confrontation. Or she could go to the river, drink deep of its cooling and peaceful water, and be cured of hatred and memories. Never before had Ki sensed such a control over her emotions.

Hollyika rose with a grunt. Ki watched her silhouette sway slightly against the deep grey sky. She looked at the half-Brurjan profile from that delicate mental balance and found a striking beauty in the strangeness of her body. 'Where are you going?' she found herself asking.

'For more water,' Hollyika reluctantly replied. 'I find I crave it now as much as when I first returned to the riverbank. And for the same reasons. The thirst of the soul. Is it not ironic, Ki? Since I came through the Gate, I have finally begun to see myself. This land has given me a true vision of myself as I am. To make that vision bearable, I must drown it in the river water. Drown it or myself. Perhaps that is one andthe same thing,'

Ki listened to the peculiar rhythm of her steps as she moved over the gravel, and looked at the Limbreth lights. Hatred and friendship teetered in her mind. Why hate? Because of what Rousters did to the Romni. Why friendship? Because she had come in peace out of the night, and shared Ki's pilgrimage. Selfishness decided Ki. If she chose to hate, she would have to pursue that course to its end. Its end was not in the promising glow of the Jewels of the Limbreth, and their peace was what she needed. She rose and followed Hollyika to the river's edge. She took the empty jug with her.

Ki knelt over the water. A short way downstream she could hear Hollyika gulping the river with an endless thirst. Ki put her face close to the rushing surface. Stray droplets of water flung up by the river in its flight misted her forehead and cheeks. She felt the cool whirl of its passage, smelled its freshness. Still she hesitated. She was not one who drank to become drunk, or ate for the taste of the food. She lived life sparingly, too wary to indulge too deeply. Her eternal caution infuriated Vandien, but had often restrained him from more trouble than he found on his own. He was one who would wallow in every pleasant sensation. Ki was a taster, a sampler, a shy child standing on the edge of her life and learning by watching others.

Now she was going to drink, was going to drown her wariness and hatred of this former Rouster in the cool sweet waters of this dark world. The river called her, whispering and roaring in her ears, and she listened. She put her lips to it.

They sat again by the wagon for a short time. The damp jug, now heavy with river water, rested between them. They didn't speak; each was focused inward, on the new sensations fizzing within their bodies. The river water extinguished the brandy sun; the heat of it fled from Ki's body as earlier the water chill had. She felt it leave her belly, briefly rise in a flush of heat that suffused her skin with a rosy glow; then it was gone. The coolness of the night cloaked her, drawing her back from any excesses, of hatred or of love.

It hit her, sudden as a gut spasm. Time to go. Time to be back upon the road that led to the Limbreth, to peace and satisfaction and an end to all goals. Like twin marionettes pulled by a single puppeteer, Ki and Hollyika came to their feet. Ki lifted the bottle, but Hollyika took it and rucked it under a river-sleeked arm.

Sigurd and Sigmund lifted their heads to watch Ki go. They would not follow, for home was the wagon. If their mistress wanted them, she would have called them and put them in their harness. Hollyika's black was less decided. He whinnied after her and trotted up to the gravel bank to stand on the smooth road looking after her. But there was no whistle, no clap of hands to beckon to him. He shook his head. After one more questioning snort, he returned to the other horses and the sweet grass.

Ki found it strange to be on the road afoot. She was not used to striding along for miles, let alone barefoot. But Hollyika's short quick steps set a pace she could match. It was, Ki reflected, a bit like taking a stroll with a chicken. There was no sound in the night but the brisk pad, pad of Hollyika's round feet on the road beside Ki. The road bent swiftly away from the river with its incessant muttering; for the first time Ki became aware of the distinctly upward slope of the road. It had begun the ascent to the hills. Ki turned her eyes up to the beckoning glow. Staring at the lights, Ki found that she did not even have to watch the road or her feet upon it. It was easy, easier than anything she had ever done in her life. The river water rushed through her, enervating her, and Ki smiled.